The United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Denmark (long story) is most honoured, indeed, to be hosting the 2012 Olympic Games. From the same people who brought you William Shakespeare, Winston Churchill, Magna Charta (Google it), an assortment of castles, palaces and royal cousins, Westminster Abbey, Downton Abbey and One Direction comes the grand and glorious spectacle that is the 2012 Opening Ceremonies, all in celebration of the sweeping cultural contributions and peaceful international presence of the British peoples, paying no particular attention to our military history from, say, 1604 to 1948.

For those of our foreign guests, dignitaries, officials and athletes arriving from over 150 foreign countries (i.e., anywhere east of Bexley) who were able to avoid any ongoing airport, bus, catamaran, plane, train or automobile strikes by choosing an alternate means of transportation (e.g., dirigible, catapult, British Airways) and thereby managed to make it inside the United Kingdom despite the best efforts by the agents of Her Majesty’s Immigration Services (all six of them) to keep each and every one of you out, welcome! For those of you stuck at some point along the way, please be patient. With time, the problem will surely resolve itself. Read more at The Huffington Post.

There are times, during the summer months, when we board onto jitneys and pile into cars, our tote bags chocked to the brim with beach towels and swimsuits and flip-flops (and allergy medications, and highly SPF’ed sun-ointments), and soon — traffic allowing — find ourselves in exotic lands of Arcadian pastoralism and poolside cocktails and alarmingly large mosquitoes, with not an ambulance siren or swerving taxi cab or slow-walking gaggle of horizontally-flanked foreign-tourist-pedestrians-in-matching-backpacks to keep us agog. Read more at Esquire.

Some wonderful news! To mark the release of all seven volumes of Harry Potter in eBook format, the Norton Library, in conjunction with David Cameron’s Big Society and J.K. Rowling’s No Child-Actor Left Behind initiative, is pleased to announce the release of its very own, definitive Norton Critical Edition ofHarry Potter!

Produced with the British Government to offset any economic fallout from hosting the Olympic Games, painstakingly researched by some of the best literary minds at Oxford and Cambridge because on-location filming of the Harry Potter series is over and tourists just don’t visit like they used to and please help us, and compiled under the watchful eyes of our Norton editors now that all interest in Dryden and Milton has dried up because everybody’s spending their time and money on ridiculous new contraptions upon which to play that even more ridiculous Angry Birds Guitar Warcraft Move Dance Dance game or whatever it’s called while they’re all hopped up on Skittles and Pepsi-Cola even though it’s three o’clock in the morning and some people have to go to work the next day and are trying to get some sleep, we’ve completely lost track of this sentence. The point being: Child actors don’t feed themselves, and Ms. Rowling’s castle needs a bigger moat. Read more at The Huffington Post.

Macroware.Remember us? We’re the software corporation from long, long ago (i.e., the 1980s and ’90s) that brought you our ingenious Portholes Operating System, followed shortly thereafter by Portholes 2, Portholes 2.1, Portholes 3, Portholes 3.1, and Portholes DW (Doesn’t Work edition), which were all tremendously popular before a certain group of upstarts from a Cupertino-based software-company-that-shan’t-be-mentioned started cornering the market with devices that, quite frankly, looked like ridiculously large jelly beans. Well, we’re at it again, and this time, we have the tablet-like computer-thing that everybody’s talking about! Read more at Esquire.

That placid, be-chino’ed stretch of weekends between Memorial and Labor Days (some may call it summer) is finally upon us. In many ways, these months are all about simplicity and comfort, and the season officially starts for me in the simplest fashion, when I trek to American Apparel (despite knowing that look you’re giving me through the computer screen). Once there, I purchase a heaping stack of their white, crewneck, cotton t-shirts, to replace the bunch that were over-washed and over-worn, ripped, torn, and bleached, over the past year. The new ones will be used in the same way the old ones were: worn with a pair of jeans, or under a sweater, as to create that “I just threw on a t-shirt” look. Read more at Esquire.

We can’t tell you how proud we were to see you up on that stage, receiving your diploma! Now that you’ve graduated, you’re in a world filled with so very many wonderful, wonderful opportunities! This world, unfortunately, is reserved for people who graduated before 2005. Naturally, you’ll need to move back home. Read more at VanityFair.com.

How far Lyndon Baines Johnson had come from that desolate stretch of Texas Hill Country where he spent his boyhood and early manhood, from that hardscrabble life in a clapboard farmhouse on the Pedernales River. He had ascended to the House of Representatives, and then to the Senate, and next to the vice-presidency, and next, next to the presidency; and, then, next, then, then, next, to that rectangular hibachi table of a small restaurant in midtown Manhattan, its grills a sizzling smorgasbord of steak and shrimp and chicken, where the President would be dining. Its name: Benihana. Read more at VanityFair.com.

With tax season finally drawing to a close,we enter that peculiar time of year when many a working man — especially those not in the writerly professions — receive some sort of reward from Uncle Sam for the onerous task of accounting financially for the past twelve months (i.e., we get a tax refund). In the past, a nice bottle of Barolo, a new pair of running shoes, perhaps even an iSomething might have tided us over for another fiscal year, while the rest of our gelt was squirreled away into low-yield savings accounts, if not a hollowed-out mattress. But as the economy thawed, and with the Dow hovering around the 13,000 mark, it’s time to consider loosening the death grip that previously held those purse strings. Once you’ve done that, the question quickly becomes: What should a stylish man do with that extra spot of money? Read more at Esquire.

We see a large, outdoor arena. The ANNOUNCER’s voice comes over the public-address system.

ANNOUNCER

Welcome to the first annual Anchorman Games, a competition we stole from a book we haven’t actually read, so there will be some liberties taken with names, places, and concepts herein. As you know, a boy and a girl have been selected from the 12 districts of some long-ago-forgotten land called North America. And San Diego. Funny how that works. Representing the San Diego district will be Anchorman Ron Burgundy and Anchorwoman Veronica Corningstone.

RON BURGUNDY, anchorman of yesteryear, and his trusty dog, BAXTER, appear at a podium. VERONICA CORNINGSTONE is at their side.Read more at Esquire.

After a year and a half hiatus,AMC is pleased to announce the return of its hit television series Mad Men. It’s the same critically acclaimed show that audiences know and love, following the trials and tribulations of love, life and work in the 1960s, though this season, there’s going to be a whole lot more, including musical numbers, celebrity judges and real housewives of pretty much everywhere.

The Emmy nominated and Golden Globe award-winning cast returns for the two-hour season premiere, with John Hamm, Elisabeth Moss, January Jones, John Slattery, Christina Hendricks, Justin Bieber, Taylor Lautner, Ricky Gervais, Michael “The Situation” Sorrentino, Sidney Poitier, Hulk Hogan, Joan Fonda as the ghost of Ida Blankenship, and Kim Kardashian as the kind and gentle king of the sea, Flipper. After the mid-trimesterly season finale, occurring approximately 17 minutes into the fourth episode so that cast, crew and caterers can re-re-renegotiate their contracts, the regular players will be joined by more than a smattering of zombies, muppets and teenage vampires. Look! It’s Lindsay Lohan! What’s she doing here? Hard to say. Read more at The Huffington Post.

On this show last week,you heard me talk about Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke. In the contentious debate over reproductive rights, I may have gone too far: I called her a slut, a prostitute, a whore. And, in the privacy of my own offices, I may have insinuated that I didn’t like her haircut, and that I found her outfit to be more than a little unbecoming. She was appearing in front of Congress, and certainly could have at least Callista Gingrich-ed it up a little—lacquered her hair, spackled on some lips, worn a tasteful necklace, but nothing too expensive. After all, she is in law school, and has to defray the costs of all that progestero—err, tuition. Read more at VanityFair.com.

Tim Coppens.

You’ve got to hand it to Belgian-born designer Tim Coppens. With his background in sportswear, this Ecco Domani Fashion Fund award-winner knows how to build a collection, and not just because of the architecture so omnipresent in his latest work. Here’s a rundown of the reasons why he’s one of our favorites. Read more at Paper magazine.

NUMBER:Lab.

It was all in the sporty details at yesterday’s runway show of Luis Fernandez’s NUMBER:Lab collection. This sportswear-inspired gear had a not-your-average-trip-to-the-gym feel, with a mining theme that was brought home with models that walked onto the runway carrying pickaxes. Here’s a list of the top three sartorial elements that’ll help you brave the elements come Fall/Winter 2012. Read more at Paper magazine.

Rag & Bone.

The post-industrial, post-Edwardian punk of Marcus Wainright and David Neville’s imagination was on full display earlier this afternoon as they presented their Rag & Bone F/W 2012 Collection at Pier 57. For some reason, as the models marched to the strains of Thom Yorke’s dark tunes, winding through the pier’s cavernous interior, past steel girders and beyond narrow shafts of sunlight, I kept on thinking of the film There Will Be Blood, and not just because of the long boots that were doing the marching. Here’s a breakdown of what led to this line of sartorial thinking. Read more at Paper magazine.

N. Hoolywood.

Last night, in a sepulchral wood-paneled room at La Venue, Japanese designer Daisuke Obana presented his N.Hoolywood F/W 2012 collection. The show was set to the sound of haunting sea chanteys, a curious choice, which I had the opportunity to ask Mr. Obana about backstage. “They’re old fishing songs,” he said through a translator, “A mix of eight of them, which I found at a record shop in San Francisco.” Read more at Paper magazine.

Salutations to each of you! You might have heard yesterday’s news about our company, the great and munificent Face-Book! Early in the day, representatives from our business office met with the DJIA — along with the IMF, ICM, CAA, LOL, ROTFL, LMAO, and the New York Health & Racquet Club — and we all reached the same conclusion: The time has come, after eight long and arduous yet glorious years, for us to offer, publicly and initially, an Initial Public Offering, henceforth to be abbreviated SIW (Suck It, Winklevosses).

Some within the Face-Book family may bemoan such a decision. The naysayers, as naysayers so often do, may say nay. And they may bemoan, too, like the bemoaners. We are a Silicon Valley company, after all, located in humble, downtown Menlo Park. I, our all-knowing leader, wear New Balances. How could we possibly be worth so much? Read more at Esquire.

A self-proclaimed “typical girl,” Tracy Smith knew she wanted to work in fashion, but wasn’t sure how. While sifting through junk for that perfect piece of jewelry, she found it! And so began House of Lavande.Read more at Avenue Magazine.